Transcription
I was roughed up, slapped, made to kneel down by a sentry, kicked in the chest, sense falling because I did not know that I had to bow to him to cross the bridge. I felt that a dark ages had descended upon us.
So suddenly in August 1965 we had to create a nation out of a mly collection of Chinese, Indians, Malays and others who had come to Singapore to seek a better life but not to be a a nation.
If you're going to get a people to take national service seriously, I could not ask other people's sons to fight and die for the properties of the wealthy. Policies must be pragmatic, not dogmatic. I learned early to ignore political correctness and to reject conventional wisdom when it did not accord with reality or my experience. Now I believe it will be equally mistaken to follow mindlessly the current politically correct and stridently advocated view that democracy is the precondition for economic development. I know it's a heresy in Harvard Cambridge. What a country needs for growth and progress is stability and good government. one that is honest and effective and works for the benefit of the people. Good government should never be shackled by theories, however attractive and logically elegant.
Satellite television has allowed me to follow the American presidential campaign. I am amazed at the way media professionals can give a candidate a new image and transform him at least superficially into a different personality. Winning an election becomes in large measure a contest in packaging and advertising. These new techniques have been so successful that Europe has also bought into them. A spin doctor now is a highinccome professional, one in great demand. From such a process, I doubt if a Churchill, a rose or a decor can emerge.
Fore speech. Fore. My work was on a small frame of an island some 224 square miles at low tide. not to be compared with a white canvas of other world leaders. First question I ask in writing this speech, are there lessons on leadership? It's easier to recognize a man who is already a leader than to identify one before he becomes a leader. During my 40 years in office, I've met many foreign leaders in government, in the military, and in business. The characteristics they have in common were self-confidence, breath of mind, the ability to see the woods for the trees, and the ability to communicate. I'm familiar with most of the first generation of anti-colonial leaders to which I belong. They all had strong nationalist anti-colonial convictions and wanted to prove that their people or their peoples could measure up to their former rulers. Unhappily, many third world leaders who had successfully demolished the old order failed to build a new one because building a new order demanded different and more complex capabilities. Decision making in economics to achieve the highest returns on capital was not their forte. They could enthuse their followers to keep up the fight against the old regime and they had oversimplified what needed to be done after the colonizers have handed over power. Many leaders actually believed their own rhetoric that once they were rid of their exploiters, there would be wealth of plenty to go around. and the economic models that they admired were socialists. Why did these leaders follow the wrong model? Were they ignorant? On the contrary, many like Michael Manley, the late prime minister of Jamaica, they were highly intelligent men and he was a graduate of distinguished of a distinguished institution, the London School of Economics. But they admired the early independence heroes, Nu, Sakarno, Maung, Tito. None of these early freedom fighters believed that wealth was something that had to be created by entrepreneurs. People who raised capital, organized workers to produce goods and services that others wanted and would pay for because their prices were competitive. They all believed that there were shortcuts to prosperity and they thought the best way was by state intervention. This was a mistake that otherwise well-intentioned leaders like Julius Neri of Tanzania made. He was a good honest Christian but held doctrinary ideas on how to modernize Tanzania. His policies were ills suited for a smallcale African agricultural economy and both Julius Ner and Kenneth Cander of Zambia failed to develop their economies. On the other hand, Jomo Kenyata and his successor Daniel Arab Moy of Kenya made their country more prosperous in spite of considerable corruption. What was the difference? It lay in the interventionist state policies of the first two compared to the free market policies of Kenya.
I've been asked time and again how was it that my colleagues and I avoided falling into this trap? Before I answer this question, let me start by explaining how I became politicized. The first turning point of my life was World War II. The way the British was routed by the Japanese. Before the war broke out, our British rulers feared that the Asians would panic if bombs and shells fell upon them. When the bombs and shells actually came, it was the British bosses who were shocked and packed their families off. Their Chinese, Indian, and Malay subjects stoically bore their sufferings. That aura of overwhelming superiority with which the British held us enthral was broken, never to be restored. Another turning point was the experience of the brutality and cruelty of our Japanese conquerors. They had portrayed themselves as liberators of fellow Asians from the white man, but they left us in no doubt that they were the new masters of the so-called greater East Asia co-rossperity sphere and to punish the Chinese in Singapore for supporting the nationalist government of China with donations to fight Japanese aggression within The first 15 days of their conquest of Singapore, they picked off at random 50,000 to 100,000 Chinese youths out of concentration centers and machine gunned them on the on the beaches. I had firsthand experience of Japanese militarism when a Japanese platoon was decided to build themselves in my home. My family had fled to the countryside and it was four days of hell. I was roughed up, slapped, made to kneel down by a sentry, kicked in the chest, sense sprawling because I did not know that I had to bow to him to cross the bridge. I felt that a dark ages had descended upon us. and I watched 80,000 dejected British, Indian, and Australian troops march into captivity in 48 hours. Many of my friends shared this harrowing experience. We asked ourselves, why? What right had the Japanese to do this to us? Why did the British not fight the Japanese more ferociously to defend us? And when the British came back after three and a half years after the bombs in Nagasaki, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the communists who had organized the resistance in the jungles of Malaya attempted to grab power as as theirs as of right. But I feared them as much as I feared the Japanese. As a result, many nationalists like me were born.
After the war, my contemporaries and I gathered in London. We were studying in various universities in England and there was ferment in the air. India had got its independence in 47. So had Pakistan, Irma, Salon. Why not Malaya which then included Singapore? The British cut off Singapore from Malaya as they prepared to give independence to the Malaise in Malaya. They wanted to keep Singapore as one link in a chain of naval bases from Portsmouth to Gibraltar to Suez to Aiden to Singapore to Sydney. But after the British lost su in 1956, they agreed to let us rejoin Malaya. By then it was too late. The Malay majority was not prepared to treat the Chinese, Indian and other ethnic groups as equal citizens when they became as numerous as the Malays. What were my motivations? First, to get rid of colonialism and be independent. This got us involved in a fight against the communists who were well ahead of us in the struggle against the British. Later, we rejoined Malaya and had to fight the Malay extremists who wanted to dominate other ethnic groups in Malays in Malaysia. As a result, in less than two years of federation, Singapore was asked to leave and we had to agree because the alternative was bloodshed which the Malaysian prime minister Tungul Abdul Raman warned us. So suddenly in August 1965 we had to create a nation out of a mly collection of Chinese, Indians, Malays and others who had come to Singapore to seek a better life but not to be a nation.
How did we escape choosing the wrong model? Well, we were helped by the examples of failed policies in many new countries. India, Pakistan, Salon, Burma, and Indonesia had gained their independence in the 1940s. Ghana and Nigeria in the 1950s. By 1965, they were not thriving. India's prime minister Jawaharu had embibed socialist theories from his generation of British philosophers, economists and political scientists when he was a student at Cambridge. A powerful factor then was the example of the British under Clement Atley whose labor government had set out to equalize opportunities and results. Their policies led to the nationalization of key industries. Iron and coal, steel mills, prochemicals, synthetic fiber plants all became state enterprises. So did the railways, the buses and all manner of transportation. For more than four decades, India made the same car in 1950 Morris Oxford in a state-run factory. They called it the Hindustad. No one checked the bottom line for rates of return on capital. Profit was a dirty word associated with a capitalist. Now, let me confess that in my student days up at Cambridge in the 1940s after World War II, I was convinced that Britain's welfare state was the highest form of civilized society. And in my teen years, I was a great admirer of Pandinero. But I could see that he had adopted the wrong model by the 1960s. That he had set India on the path of a planned economy with concentration on heavy industries. And his successors carried on with these policies until Prime Minister Naros Singam Raalo began to change course late in the mid 1990s. But there was another compelling reason for pragmatic solutions. In 1965 when we became independent, Indonesia under President Sarno, a great auditor was waging an undeclared war, low intensity, which he called confrontasi, an Indonesian word for confrontation against Singapore and Malaysia. And in Malaysia, the Tonku, the prime minister wanted to bypass Singapore as Malaysia's commercial outlet. We could not afford to risk our future on theories. We had a daunting task to create a new economy, not one so dependent on entrepreneur trade with our neighbors. and independence brought worries for our future, not euphoria. We were no longer the commercial, administrative, or military center of the British Empire in Southeast Asia. The British were departing. The odds were against our survival, and we had to ensure our own existence, which we had previously taken for granted. Our first preoccupation for survival which meant economic viability had to be solved. Next security. I cast around for solutions. We reached out first to Hong Kong and Taiwan investors in textiles, garments, plastics and low value added products. Later, a UNDP expert working in Singapore described to me how Israel had leapfrogged its neighbors, neighbors who boycotted them and exported to Europe and America fruits, flowers, many other things. I thought to myself, why not seek links with the developed countries, get industrial investments from Europe, Japan and America. They came but far and few between. Then fortuitously China went into convulsion of the cultural revolution and it reached a crescendo in 1967. So computer companies like Texas Instruments, Hulit Packard, National Semiconductors, they passed over Taiwan and Hong Kong and we attracted them to Singapore. We had political stability, industrial peace, plus English as our working language. Pull factors. 20 years later, we had become a major manufacturer of electronics, computers, and disc drives. The Leaprog strategy succeeded. I worked out another strategy. the other side of the coin and that was to create or to turn Singapore, a third world island into a first world oasis in a third world region so that entrepreneurs and their families from the first world would base themselves in Singapore whilst they explored the region. So we established up-to-date facilities in communications and transportation, airport, container port, state-of-the-art telecoms and security, personal and public security, health standards to approximate first world, and a living environment equal to the first world. Later we improved our cultural facilities, museums, symphony orchestras, visiting artists. The hardware part was easy. Getting people to change their habits to match first world infrastructure that they now had. That was difficult, slow and painful. We made progress by a series of campaigns involving the whole population. More courtesy, stop splitting. Keep public laboratories clean. Not a minor item if you want a tourist trade to prosper. And no chewing gum if you don't want your train doors not to close and no litter and no pickpockets. One rewarding decision was to green up the island with trees, palms, shrubs, creepers, flowers to make Singapore different. We had rain the year all year round, sunshine. All we needed to do was to plant them and trim them. And we involved the whole population in planting and caring for them. And we made progress and slowly our people are now acting more like a first world civic society. Although there's a long way to go, they still have their telephones buzzing in concerts. We had to do a U-turn to carry our people with us or we would fail. In place of constant strife and agitation, we had to convince workers and their union leaders that unless we had industrial peace and worker cooperation with management to improve productivity, we would be overwhelmed by our unemployment. The history of Singapore after independence was one hard long slog to make ourselves relevant and useful to the world to add value to both foreign investments that we sought and those that we ourselves made with our savings. Our next major task was to establish security which had to be based on social cohesion of our many races, religions, languages and cultures. All successor governments of colonial regimes have inherited this problem of multi-ribal, multilingual, multi-religious, multicultural solidarity. how to achieve it because without a cohesive people at peace with each other development was not possible. Our solution to the problem of a young nation was a policy of deliberate gradualism in all matters which involved race, language, culture and religion. We have 77% Chinese but from different parts of China speaking different and mutually unintelligible dialects. 14% Malay Muslims from different parts of Malaysia and Indonesia. 8% Indians from different parts of India speaking totally different languages. the rest from Europe and other parts of Asia. We needed a common language. Had we legislated for one, there would have been trouble. Which one? So, we encouraged everyone to learn two languages, English and the mother tongue. English is no group's mother tongue. So no one gain any advantage and we made it our working language. We have not forced or pressurecooked a national identity. We have refrained from suppressing ethnic cultures, languages, religions or their sense of separate identity. We aimed for integration not assimilation. Another critical decision I made within a year of independence was to build a national service armed force. If we did not have the ability to defend ourselves, nobody, not even our own people, would have faith in our future. Foreign and UN intervention would always come too late. So we studied the Swiss, the Swedes and the Israelis. The Israelis offered help to build a system for totally national service armed force. We now have a credible defense capability to produce results. We need clean a clean government with an effective civil service. And we had to shape the administration to produce that effective instrument of policy. This required strong, fair and just leaders with a moral strength to command the respect of the people. Unity in the core group of leaders ensured that we sent clear signals to our people and avoided confusion that would have arisen if the team had bickered and split. Leaders must have that sense of being trustees that they are only temporarily in charge of the destinies of their people and that their duty is not only to discharge this trust but also to pass it on to equally trustworthy and competent hands. So luxurious living while our people were left in poverty and backwardness was out. We ensured complete accountability and open separateness between personal assets and public funds. Corruption which has been a cancer in many societies had to be eradicated and constantly kept down. A government voted into office needs an efficient, honest administration staffed by officers recruited completely on merit by a politically neutral body. We had an impartial capable public service commission with a chairman and members who were shrewd at assessing character. Promotions and rewards of scholarships must be made to the best candidates and they have to share the nation building philosophy and the development goals of the political leaders. They must also be adequately paid so that temptations would not be too difficult to resist. Once a political system has been corrupted right from the top from the very top to the lowest rungs of the bureaucracy the problem is almost impossible to solve without a revolution. The cleansing and disinfecting has to start from the top and go downwards in a thorough and systematic way. It was a long and laborious process that can be carried out only by a very strong group of leaders with a courage and moral authority derived from unquestioned integrity. We just managed it and stopped it before it got out of control. Next, we decided that the people should be stakeholders. Soon after separation, I resolved to enable every household to own their own home. If you're going to get a people to take national service seriously, I could not ask other people's sons to fight and die for the properties of the wealthy. So he worked out a personal savings scheme that allowed them to own an apartment painlessly through installments over 20 years. Today 95% of Singaporean households are homeowners. They are value between 100,000 US to 400,000 US between a three room to a five room apartment. Without this home ownership, we would have become like Tokyo, Seoul or Hong Kong where the voters in the city are disaffected when they have to pay a large proportion of their salaries in rents. In Singapore, they have voted for the return of the government in nine successive general elections. They know who will keep the property values of their homes up. Policies must be pragmatic, not dogmatic. I learned early to ignore political correctness and to reject conventional wisdom when it did not accord with reality or my experience. For example, in the 1960s and 70s, it was politically correct to be anti-American and anti- multinationals. The theory expounded by Latin Americans like Raal Pravesh was that multinationals would reduce them to dependencia. We did not accept this and we assiduously ced the MNC's. They had the capital, the technology, the knowhow and the markets. We decided it was the fastest way of learning on the job, working for them and with them. Now I believe it will be equally mistaken to follow mindlessly the current politically correct and stridently advocated view that democracy is the precondition for economic development. I know it's a heresy in Harvard Cambridge. The theory goes that without democracy, Russia could not develop a free market. Russia could not develop a free market with or without democracy. And it was not borne out by the experience of Taiwan, South Korea or post open door China. What a country needs for growth and progress is stability and good government. One that is honest and effective and works for the benefit of the people. Good government should never be shackled by theories, however attractive and logically elegant.
From the outset, we decided that education was the key to our future. in what language should we teach? This was a sensitive and emotive issue involving the mother tongues and cultures of various races. And I had to resist the pressure to make Chinese the primary language although 77% of the people were Chinese. Instead, I made English the working language. Not the official language, just the working language. Let's be practical. And I allowed parents to choose between schools that taught in English and Chinese or Malay and Tamil or in Chinese with English or Malay in English and Tamil in English. It was their choice. And in a few years, parents realized that their children's future was best assured when they were competent in English. In other words, English as the first language and the mother tongue as a second language because even our Chinese banks were switching to English. We expanded schools, built new technical institutes, polytechnics and universities. This proved decisive for our progress. My final and most important decision was to prepare or rather to plan and prepare for succession and not leave it to chance. After three successive successful elections in 10 years since we first won and took office in 59, my old god colleagues and I were troubled by the caliba of the young men that we had been able to induct. They were the best of our political activists, our supporters, professionals, academics with PhDs. But they were not equal to the original team. My original team had been thrown up by the upheavalss of the Second World War and were among the best of that generation. Those that didn't have it were knocked out by sheer elimination of events. Now we were not getting the best to volunteer to join us. We had to identify potential leaders. But how? Well, some people are natural alphas. Activists in their school days are school prefects, sport captains or presidents of college societies. Alphas usually are extroverts with high energy levels. But as these school and college leaders grew older, many did not measure up. The validictorian in school does not always make it after college. Few of those voted in college as most likely to succeed make it in the real world. As they grow older, they need other qualities to stay as leaders. higher levels of intellectual ability, a steady character, judgment, a decision making capability that can win the confidence of those around them. Seven times from 1959 to 1990, before each election, I had to select 20 to 30 candidates who were likely to make good as ministers. But first as members of parliament and then some as ministers. The easiest attribute to determine is intelligence performance in examinations, IQ tests, sat scores, they give an indic a fair indication of analytical ability. Many that we fielded with PhDs failed as ministers. They lacked something. When I learned from American corporate leaders that they use psychometric tests to recruit and promote the executives, I recall the epic flight of the three astronauts on Apollo 13. If you remember, their spaceship malfunctioned 3,000 mi out in space. any false move and they would never return to Earth. They remained calm, collected throughout the ordeal and trusting their fate to the men at ground control whose instructions they followed meticulously. I concluded that NASA's psychological tests on the ground had successfully eliminated those who were prone to panic in a crisis. I decided in 1980 therefore to adopt their practice and I had psychological and psychometric tests to help us assess the character of candidates to weed out those who were not likely to succeed but they couldn't help us. They couldn't tell us who was likely to succeed. The prospect of failure forced us to talent spot. After a high attrition rate at the beginning, we improved our selection methods. We threw candidates into the deep end of the pool to test their political skills. Finally, I was concerned that the government machinery of the 31 years had been customized to suit my work style. So I made a conscious effort in my last two years to make room for my successor so that he can reconfigure the arrangements. So when a new god of men in their 40s and 50s took over in 1990, there was no crashing of gears. And instead in the 1990s, Singapore has repeatedly been rated by Transparency International in Berlin among the top seven least corrupt countries in the world, the least corrupt in Asia. And we have not become decadent and corrupt after 41 years in office. The old gods set high standards because they were brought up that way. The new gods have been able to maintain the self-discipline and integrity in the midst of growing affluence. Our judiciary and the rule of law are rated by the world economic forum and the institute of management and development in Geneva and perk which is a rating agency in Hong Kong as the best in Asia. It commands the respect of the people and of our investors. And Singapore is ranked by WEF and IMD as the second most competitive nation in the world after the United States. They say I do not listen to my opponents. I do when they are serious opponents. We studied all those items where we were rated poorly and we set out to do better. We practiced lifelong learning before it became a buzzword. What were the basic strengths that made this possible? A basic idealism and an integrity that drives the whole system. But new forces are at work. The present leaders grew up in a Singapore that was stable and growing year by year. People have got accustomed to the comforts of a modern affluent society and expect life to be better every year. Opinion polls are becoming a regular feature of public life. Leadership has been reduced to the shaping of a policy so that somehow it would be able to carry the majority and if not the majority then the pro polarity in the hope that it will expand into a majority by the next election. I view this with mixed feelings as a totally different way from what I used to do. In the 1960s, strikes, demonstrations, disorder, and violence threatened our existence. People faced dire choices. Leaders had to lead, make bold decisions, and act swiftly. Only later did I have to convince the people to support our decisions. For example, I had to carry out a campaign to win a referendum to take Singapore into Malaysia. But when bloodshed threatened and the Malaysian government wanted Singapore to be out, I did not. Indeed, I could not hold a referendum and consult the people before I took them out. that would have meant disaster. I took the decision, persuaded my cabinet colleagues to sign the separation agreement with me, and I'm about independent Singapore. To build a more stable Singapore, I did not discuss nor ask our different races whether they like to live integrated together in new highrises. When we were building to replace the squatter huts, I knew what the answer was going to be. They wanted to stay together. But would that be good for us? The British had allowed them to be segregated in Malay villages, Chinese quarters, and an Indian enclave because it was easier to rule such groups of people separated by race, language, and religion. We had to form a nation or try to. So my colleagues and I decided that the people would ballot for their apartments and they would have Chinese, Malays, Indians, Eurasians and others as their neighbors. We did not seek their consent for the first few years. They were not comfortable. After 10 years, it became a way of life. We did the same in the schools. Children used to be segregated into Malay, Chinese, Indian and English language schools. Slowly and gradually I persuaded parents to register their children for schools that use English and the mother tongue as a second language. And when they did so, their children graduated into the best jobs. Now we have schools with all races in mixed classrooms and integration has become a fact of life. The business of government can be executed effectively only by people's representatives exercising their judgments based on their mandate. The people had given me a mandate to join Malaysia on fair terms. When the prime minister was fear of Malaysia was fearful of a blood bath, I exercised my judgment to separate without consulting the people. So also racial integration and housing and schooling was part of my mandate given in elections every 5 years that I won. The difference between the old god and the new god leaders are stark reflecting the differences between the old society and the new. The old society was a revolutionary situation. People felt that everything including their lives were at stake. They trusted their leaders and gave us unstinting support. It was an inspired generation that fought against great odds to succeed as an independent country. The new society is secure, comfortable, confident. Many of the young believe that prosperity and stability to be theirs as of right and to consult them and that they must be consulted before any change is made which could affect them. Well, this change is unavoidable, but does it mean that leaders have to govern by the polls as in many developed societies? However, recent upheavalss in Indonesia have brutally reminded Singaporeans of the volatility of their surroundings and alerted them to the dangers that lurk around them. This may stop Singaporeans from becoming too complacent and consumerdriven a society and remind them that they need to make that extra effort to achieve more than the ordinary. Many failures in the third world were the result of the leaders of the immediate postindependence period the 1960s to the 80s abiding by the theory then prevailing that socialism and state enterprises would hasten development. Their interventionist economic policies led to a misallocation of resources and increase opportunities for corruption. That theory was demolished as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union. There is no reason why third world leaders cannot succeed in achieving growth and development if they can maintain social order, educate their people, maintain peace with their neighbors, and gain the confidence of investors by upholding the rule of law.
Finally, are great leaders born or are they the result of revolutionary situations? From my experience, I think it's both, but more because of circumstances. Maong and Tong Xiaoping were thrown out of a massive convulsion of 4 to 500 million Chinese after 100 years of decay and decline into warlordism and Japanese occupation. Ma was the revolutionary who liberated China. Dung was the builder who saved China from imploding like the Soviet Union. Who was the greater leader? Mao Autumn as leader of the Chinese Communist Party in his fight to liberate China. Mao was unquestionably the unbeatable leader, a genius at guerilla warfare who defeated the Japanese or helped to defeat the Japanese and the nationalist government. But was he the modernizer of China? Had he lived on or had Wakoffer, his immediate successor, stayed in charge, China would have gone like the Soviet Union. The party heavyweights brought back Tong, a veteran of the Long March, and Tong was not an ideologue like Mao. Ever the realist with a keen sense of the basics of the economy, he realized that the communist system was not delivering. He opened up China economically in 1979 or late 78 kept a tight hold on political and social control of the country. Although the opening up faltered after Tanan in 1989, he pushed it again in 1992 while on a southern tour of Kangong province. Had tung followed Gobbachov in implementing both glass and paristroka in the at the same time, China would have collapsed in chaos. Are there no great leaders of that caliba in China today? Surely there must be. But present day China requires a different kind of leader. not creators of liberation armies, but competent, imaginative builders of the economy and flexible managers of the huge social and political changes that will flow from the opening up of China to the world. The needs of a country vary from time to time. China now has the prospect of becoming an advanced technological society in the next 50 years. provided its leaders can manage the changes to its economy and its societ its society. More important, they have to be courageous and skillful enough to adjust and change their political system to involve the better educated, more articulate and assertive people, 70% of whom will live in the cities. and they will have to do all this without losing political stability. Similarly, the difference in mood between America and Europe, both under threat in World War II and the comfortable consumer societies of the 1990s. This explains the absence of towering leaders. Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, Charles de Gaul, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Secretary of State Dean Herson. They were strong leaders their people needed in times of crisis. Neville Chamberlain gave way to Churchill who promised them who promised the British people blood, sweat, and tears. After Nazi Germany was defeated and the danger had passed, they voted in Clement Atley as prime minister. Churchill's small, mildl looking deputy during the war. Similarly, de Gaul became the symbol of French resistance to a German occupied Vichy France under Marshall Petar. He returned in triumph to Paris in 1944, but went into retirement after he made two partially successful attempts or unsuccessful attempts to reorganize the government. He was recalled from retirement and elected president in 1958 by the National Assembly during a severe crisis over the stalemate of the Algerian war. When France was restored to prosperity, the young wanted change and took to the streets. The Gaul resigned when he lost the referendum in 1969. Security, prosperity and the consumer society plus mass communications have made for a different kind of person getting elected as leader. One who can present himself and his program in a polished way. Satellite television has allowed me to follow the American presidential campaign. I'm amazed at the way media professionals can give a candidate a new image and transform him at least superficially into a different personality. Winning an election becomes in large measure a contest in packaging and advertising. These new techniques have been so successful that Europe has also bought into them. A spin doctor now is a highinccome professional, one in great demand. From such a process, I doubt if a Churchill, a Roosevelt or a decor can emerge. The difference between Winston Churchill and Tony Blair is the difference between their two societies. One caught in a titanic struggle, the other comfortable and secure, facing no external threats, reluctant to join Europe or reluctant to join the euro or to have his accustomed way of life upset in a federal Europe. Revolutionary situations throw up great leaders who demand blood, sweat, and tears. Comfortable circumstances produce leaders who promise people an even easier life. whether they can deliver it or not. But when the British felt that Britain was slipping, they voted for a conviction politician in Margaret Thatcher three times from 1979 to 1919. Similarly, when the Americans feared that their country was becoming weak during the Carti years, when American diplomats were held as hostages in Tyran and the Soviet Union menacingly invaded Afghanistan, they voted for Ronald Reagan for two terms. Germany defeated and divided after the war produced Conrad. Germany recovered and became the economic engine of Europe. Germans still felt threatened and vulnerable. They voted four times for another conviction politician, Helmwood Cole, who for 16 years cooperated closely with America and established strong bonds with France. When the opportunity came with the fall of the Berlin wall in November 1989, he seized the moment and by 1990 had reunified Germany. With Germany reunited and the danger from Russia diminished, the people's mood changed. In 1998, they voted Cole out in favor of Ghhat shoulder. Germans wanted a change to a new media savvy generation of Bill Clintons's and Tony Blair. This brings me to my last question. Can you teach a person to be a leader? Yes, if that person has the primary attributes to be a leader, then lessons in leadership will help him develop his skills and become more effective, a leader with fewer costly errors. Ano Toinby in his massive study of history argues that if the challenge is too great for a people, they will fail. However great the leader, but that if there is no challenge, a people will not achieve much. Fortunately for Singapore, the challenge was not beyond the capability of its leaders to draw the best out of the people. If Singapore has once again to face circumstances as daunting as those and the first decade of its existence, both people and leaders must be able to rise to the occasion for the country to survive. Thank you.
>> Um, good evening. Uh, Senior Minister Lee, my name is Felicity Spectre and I work at the Center for Public Leadership here at the Kennedy School. Um, I'm also a television journalist from Britain. And it's in that aspect, if you like, that I asked my question. Um, when you were an opposition member of the Malay Parliament in 1964, you passionately defended the idea of a free press and you said, "If your ideas and your views cannot stand the challenge of criticism, then they are too fragile and not sturdy enough to last." Why then as the leader of Singapore did you react um to restrict uh the freedom of the press of opponents within parliament? And do you think this has stopped Singapore from becoming a first world civic society in the fullest sense of the meaning?
>> Circumstances change and create new situations and the individual must react to it. Rhetoric is part of the business of leadership. It is. It is. But even as I said it in Malaysia, I knew that certain things were out of bounds in Singapore when we had just separated and the Malays were unhappy and felt betrayed and abandoned. For issues of race, language and religion to be raised in public would have been very something wrong with you. See,
>> you got the mic. Uh, his mic is gone. here. Use mine.
>> I should be on. Okay, fine. Uh I do not believe that we had suppressed or stifled the opposition. An open debate is necessary for any democracy. But there are certain areas which at a certain at various times in the people's history are too sensitive for open discussion. Let me explain. If in the 1960s I had raised the question of whether Chinese should or should not be the national language, I might have ended up in a riot. So I quietly called up the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and told them that if they wanted peace and quiet, they should not be pressing for Chinese as the national language because that will immediately stir up such a hornet's nest fear in the Malays and the Indians who wouldn't be able to master the language and we'd be at each other's throats. Now in the more relaxed circumstances of the 1990s or the year 2000, anybody can say what they like about language because the issue is quite clear. Parents have decided that that is the way to the future. But even today, if you have a freeforall for religion, we're going to end up in a real mess. I brought a case against the Far Eastern Economic Review in 1989 uh where they had accused me of attacking the Catholic Church which is completely unfounded. So, a very aggressive British QC gave me two days in the witness box to say what's wrong. I said to him that he could defense Salman Rash Rashi's book in England, but that we had already decided to ban it before it became an issue. Was it wise? I think it was. What was the point of having this unnecessary rumpus freedom of uh intellectual discussion when it was a matter that aroused enormous passion? The Muslims in Singapore were not interested in what was in Salman Rush's book. They were interested in the fatwa or the edict of the Iranian ayatollah and that anybody who killed Salman Rushi would get a reward and go to heaven. So in that situation you begin to argue. uh if you look at what's happening in the Middle East, I think much of the trouble really is that some things are not possible of civil discourse. It arouses too much passion and emotion. But as we become more affluent and comfortable and our malays are more relaxed, perhaps we can do this. But then we have neighbors who are quite easily agitated by what we are saying in Singapore. So we have to be careful. We are not Britain uh with the French to worry about or the Germans. We have a different backdrop and we have to have a keen sense of survival.
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